Activision Blizzard Buys Candy Crush for $5.9 Billion

Activision Blizzard, a company that already owns the intellectual property to some of the biggest franchises in PC and console gaming like Call of Duty, World of Warcraft, HearthStone, etc. will purchase King Digital Entertainment, the creator of Candy Crush Saga, for $5.9 billion.

“The combined revenues and profits solidify our position as the largest most profitable standalone company in interactive entertainment,” said Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick in a statement. “With a combined global network of more than half a billion monthly active users, our potential to reach audiences around the world on the device of their choosing enables us to deliver great games to even bigger audiences than ever before.”

With the buyout, Activision addresses one of its chief areas of weakness: mobile games. Aside from HearthStone, Activision Blizzard doesn’t have much in the mobile games department, which is a problem because the popularity and profitability of mobile games is growing every day.

But $5.9 billion to shore up a deficiency in the mobile games market seems steep, no? No.

Earlier this year, Newzoo, a video game research firm, announced that revenues from mobile games would eclipse console game revenues for the first time this year. Mobile games are expected to have generated $30.3 billion worldwide while console games would only take in $26.4 billion.

In the grand scheme of things, acquiring the extremely popular Candy Crush Saga for $5.9 billion is a paltry amount of money to spend on some intellectual property that could generate huge revenues for many years to come.

The acquisition of King Digital Entertainment only confirms that mobile games are the future of gaming. Expect to see Activision Blizzard invest more time and energy in mobile franchises soon.